Profile summary

Professional biography

I graduated from Reading University with a degree in Classical Studies with Major Latin, immediately followed by an MA in the City of Rome. This was succeeded by a DPhil (PhD) at Oxford University, on the subject of the sacred landscape of Iron Age Central Adriatic Italy (Marche). During my DPhil I began teaching for the Open University, as an Associate Lecturer, and also for the Department of Classics and School of Continuing Education at Reading University. For several years I worked in the School of Continuing Education (Reading University), where I was responsible first for Archaeology and Ancient History, then for all the short course and Certificate of HE programmes. I continued to work as an Associate Lecturer and began teaching on the Oxford University Continuing Education weekly class and Summer School programmes. I joined the Department of Classical Studies at the Open University as a lecturer in September 2012.

Research interests

My research explores Roman urbanism and religion in Roman and Iron Age Italy (primarily Picenum - modern Marche and North Abruzzo), with an emphasis on the interrelationships between the human body, material culture and architecture. I am concerned with questions of individual and group identities, and the concepts and use of space. This is all underpinned by sensory studies; specifically, the development and application of multisensory approaches to understanding people's construction, experience and use of urban and ritual space, and phenomenological approaches to ancient Italic sacred landscapes. I am a founding member of the Sensory Studies in Antiquity network and on the series advisory board for Studies in Roman Space and Urbanism.

Betts, E. (2011) ‘Towards a multisensory experience of movement in the City of Rome’, in R. Laurence and D. Newsome (eds.) Rome, Ostia and Pompeii: Movement and Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.118-32.